


I'll Bless Whomever I Damn Well Please

by Periphyton



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Technical skills can be used by any side, That asshole boss who punishes you for being too good at your job
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 09:08:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19787746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Periphyton/pseuds/Periphyton
Summary: Aziraphale hates being told what he can and can't do with his miracles.





	I'll Bless Whomever I Damn Well Please

I’ll Bless Whomever I Damn Well Please  
By Periphyton

Aziraphale was of the opinion that both Heaven and Hell could both go fuck themselves. Sideways. With a cactus.  
Well, not really. He didn’t really think that Heaven should go fuck itself, after all, he was a creature of Heaven and that’s not a proper way to regard his side of things. And he doesn’t, really, in the abstract, think that Hell should go fuck itself – he knows that they are just doing their side of the business. There are plenty of demonic acts, and some demons, who have earned a good sideways cactus fuck, but 6,000 years of acquaintance with one of Hells most accomplished demons did give him some perspective. No, it wasn’t Heaven or Hell he was pissed at. It was the Archangel Gabriel specifically, and Crowley rather less specifically. As Aziraphale walked aimlessly through Edinburgh his thoughts kept circling back in frustration even as he consciously tried to distract himself by focusing on the people around him, picking up echoes of their dreams, hopes, and joys of human life. 

It was a simple assignment – restore the faith of a woman who was doubting. Anything would have worked. A flash of wings. A chance meeting with encouraging words backed by an Angelic aura. The right song on the radio at exactly the right moment. Miracle the perfect parking spot in front of the hospital every day for three weeks. For some reason modern humans considered the perfect parking spot a significant miracle. A chance find of the exact amount of money for a bill she was late on.

Instead of playing cute he had done a true miracle. He was an Angel, a Principality, the Guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden, not some tacky little plastic figure made in China with a suction cup to stick to a window like the ones sold at the hospital’s gift shop. Aziraphale knew that outright curing her son of AIDS was a step too far, but he could – and did – send the Kaposi’s sarcoma into complete remission after she spent the entire night praying the Rosary over her son’s immortal soul. As an extra grace he boosted the boy’s T-cells up to an almost normal level. 

It was good miracle, one that brought the woman’s soul back in harmony with her belief. It had touched the boy’s soul, given him strength and hope, and impressed the socks off the doctors and nurses, planting a seed in their own souls as well. How had Crowley put it? Go big or go home. Make the miracle (or temptation) do the work for you, by investing in one action that would have multiple impacts through as many humans as possible. Who knew just what the ever widening ripples of this miracle would be? Each doctor and nurse on that ward would go to work the next day with a little more hope, and possibly a little more compassion for young men deathly ill of AIDS. Each of their patients would benefit, more souls touched by kindness and grace, reverberating back through their families and friends. The boy’s desperate self-hatred of his sexuality and his disease had been eating him alive worse than the cancer, and Aziraphale’s healing had included easing that pain too. This beautiful young man, his mother, their family, friends, the people at her church, everybody in the circle of humans surrounding this miracle would carry the extra grace of his actions forward in their lives. Crowley would be impressed at the skill and precision of it all, from a purely professional viewpoint (1). 

Archangel Gabriel, however, was not impressed. He thought it was too showy, too flashy, too intimately involved. Aziraphale had overstepped the bounds of the assignment and was forbidden to do any miracles for humans until his next assignment. He refused to listen as Aziraphale pointed out the logic of impressing as many people as possible, and that saving the boy’s life now would increase the chances of Heaven gaining his soul in the end. Just as Crowley long ago had ‘invested’ in further mayhem and evil by saving the lives of children that God had deemed too sinful to live by smuggling them onto Noah’s Ark, Aziraphale tried to explain that he was ‘investing’ in further acts of goodness this boy could possibly do in the extra time he had been Angelically granted. 

None of that mattered. Aziraphale had overstepped the letter of the law – or rather the letter of his instructions – and he was grounded from performing any Angelic magic for humans for the foreseeable future. He was frustrated at Gabriel (2) for clipping his wings because he was too good at his job, and he was irrationally pissed at Crowley for being too much of a bad influence on his technique, all those late conversations over wine about the fine little technical details of a particularly skilled act of demonic actions. Technical tricks that could be applied either way, depending on the supernatural being using them (3).

The angel stopped at a street corner, waiting for the light to change. He stood still, breathing slowly and consciously to center himself. He reached out to the Ethereal plane where his wings hovered out of human view and stretched them out, then out even further, expanding through the divine realm and carrying his soul beyond the confines of his corporal form and the itchy frustrations of the moment. Then he brought them back, pulled his wings in and centered the quiet, ethereal calm of that place within him. Around him swirled the noise of the city, cars, buses, human souls in their physical bodies, and such plants and animals that had managed to thrive in the modern human world of metal and concrete. The light changed and he walked forward with the rest of the foot traffic, his angelic serenity mostly restored. Until someone walked past him and that angelic serenity squawked like a bird stepping on its own wing. 

Crowley. There was something in that walk, the tall rangy body, the skinny hips and the shape of his shoulders that his brain interpreted as Crowley even as his soul picked up nothing but a normal human presence. A human soul, young and eager, hopeful for a lucky break. There was a Crowley-like focus to him, a sense of dedication to his craft and pride in his skill. With a little spacio-temporal metaphysical shift Aziraphale was now walking past him from the other direction. With an extremely casual stumble and a well used ‘Oh so sorry, how terribly clumsy of me, didn’t mean to run into you, sorry, wasn’t paying any attention, I’d lose my head if wasn’t attached’ he managed to get a good look at the boys face. Those cheekbones, that jawline – Aziraphale remembered when his friend had looked that young, before six millennia as a demon walking the earth had made him look careworn and cynical. But this wasn’t his demon, just a very polite young man with soft brown eyes and hair. 

Once they had extracted themselves and the boy moved on, Aziraphale followed him using a ‘never mind me, look over there’ glamour to stay unnoticed. He managed to keep it up all through the boys audition for something with BBC Scotland. He was good, throwing himself into the role with the same intensity as Crowley figuring out exactly how much temptation he can load onto a human and still pull back *just* before they break down. The boy was so good, in fact, that it was barely even the slightest nudge to convince the director to give him the part. He really didn’t even need to do it, but just that little extra divine suggestion surely wouldn’t hurt. Nowhere near enough of a supernatural effort to be considered an actual miracle. 

If there was anything that the angel had learned in a long association with a demon was that the best way to get humans to do something was to make it something they wanted to do anyway. And also, how easily one could fulfill ones own selfish desires by blessing someone else. Gabriel had prohibited Aziraphale from performing any miracles for humans, but this was something he wanted for himself. He wanted to see the bright, eager smile on this young man’s face and remember a time when that smile went with golden eyes instead of brown. He wanted to see it again and again, even watching it on the telly if that’s what it would take. 

Still wearing the ‘don’t mind me I’m not really here’ glamour Aziraphale handed him a cup of coffee, and when their hands brushed together he blessed him. A blessing of happiness and joy in his life. A blessing for success of his chosen craft, and that his success would spin out like heavenly fractals of grace to bring joy into all the lives touched by his work. The angel felt the future timelines shift slightly and resettle into a new configuration. Sometimes blessings ended up being mixed and problematic, but this one felt like giving the universe a loving hug with a big grin. With the deed done he left the building and walked through the streets radiating joy for the beings around him to pick up. Joy, with just a slight undercurrent of smugness at getting what he wanted in spite of his boss. 

\------------

David couldn’t wait to call his mum and dad. “I got it! I got the part! They said I was perfect, all I had to do was act nineteen and bonkers – yeah, mum, please, I know, not hard. But still – I got it! Campbell Bane is Takin’ Over the Asylum!” 

(1) Actually Crowley would just be impressed, period, but he wouldn’t tell his angel that. Instead he would compliment him on his technique and then tease Aziraphale of stealing his methods, just to enjoy watching him get all flustered about it. 

(2) He wasn’t frustrated at Gabriel, he was furious. But the consequences of that emotion were more than he could face so he told himself he was just frustrated.

(3) More like envious of the old snakes ability to appear bend any orders he had the way he wanted to. But the consequences of that envy were another thing he didn’t dare let himself consciously feel.

**Author's Note:**

> Takin' Over the Asylum was David Tennants first big acting break, playing the manic-depressive Campbell Bane, in the early '90's. He's quoted saying that he got the part because they needed someone who could act 19 and bonkers. He didn't need any angelic help or blessing, but it would explain a few things about him.
> 
> This is my first AO3 story, I hope you liked it. A short insight on Aziraphale at work.


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